noogz.net

posted: Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:42 | filed under: / blog/ life/ | permalink | Tags: 2009, new year, linux.conf.au, lca, lca2009, acm icpc, | Comments: 0

I notice that the most significant number on my clock has incremented (as it tends to do once every 365ish days), and hence I feel obliged to point it out to you all: Happy new year!

2009 looks like it'll be a really exciting year for me (for the first few months of it, anyway) -- I'm looking forward to (in no particular (chronological) order):

• Not going to Sydney to tutor at NCSS, instead, filling most of the rest of my summer break doing programming competition practice (exciting!!!?!)
• linux.conf.au 2009 in Hobart (and the associated bonus of finally getting friends from interstate to reciprocate visits I've paid). Only 18 more sleeps until the first day of miniconfs kicks off -- I'm thoroughly excited!
• Starting my final semester of undergrad study (not so much the overload that I'll be undertaking in order to actually finish my degree :()
• Easter in Germany!
• Competing in the World Finals of the ACM ICPC, to be held in Stockholm towards the end of April

May your 2009 also be fun, exciting and productive!

posted: Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:45 | filed under: / blog/ computers/ | permalink | Tags: lca, lca2009, | Comments: 0

Now that the complete schedule for LCA (Including miniconfs) is available, I've chosen what talks I can go to. I'm quite impressed, almost every session for the entire conference has something that's caught my eye, and so I only have one or two slots left to fill per day. Currently, my selections stand as such:

Monday

9:30-10:20
 Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, Why?  
 by Paul McKenney 
 
10:40-11:30
 Undecided
 
11:40-12:30
 - PROBABLY -  Collaborating Successfully with Large Corporations
   by Bdale Garbee 
 
13:50-14:40
 How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love ACPI  
 by Matthew Garrett 

14:50-15:40
 Undecided
 
16:00-16:50
 Kernel Lightning Talks
 
17:00-17:50
 Ask a Kernel Hacker Panel 
 
-- 

Tuesday

9:30-10:20
 Beyond Open Source  
 by Arthur Sale 
 
10:40 - 11:10
 Future directions for Copyright Law 
 by Laura Simes

11:10 - 11:30
 OpenAustralia - Everyday democracy for everybody in Australia 
 by Katherine Szuminska and Matthew Landauer  

13:50 - 14:40
 Undecided
 
14:50 - 15:20
 Freedom in Focus: CC Photography and Cultural Change 
 by Rachel Cobcroft

15:20 - 15:40
 We are the translators! 
 by Jeff Waugh 

16:00-16:50
 Undecided
 
17:00-17:50
 Undecided

-- 

Wednesday


10:40-11:30
 Introducing the Re-Built Linux Desktop 
 by Keith Packard 

11:40-12:30
 From click to pixel: A tour of the Linux graphics pipeline 
 by Carl Worth 
 
13:40-15:40
 Introduction to Django 
 by Jacob Kaplan-Moss
 
16:00-16:50
 Joining the mob: the kernel development process 
 by Jonathan Corbet
 
17:00-17:50
 Cross-distro collaboration: packaging 
 with modern version control systems 
 by Martin Krafft

--

Thursday

10:40-11:30
 - PROBABLY - AIO: Why is this so hard? 
 by Zach Brown
 
11:40-12:30
 7 Things Lawyers Don't Understand About Software 
 by Anton Hughes
 
13:50-15:40
 The Joy of Inkscape 
 by Donna Benjamin
 
16:00-16:50
 - PROBABLY - the Inkscape LPE revolution! 
 by Andy Fitzsimon
 
17:00-17:50
 Tricks of the Trade: Learning Free Software 
 hacking from clever people 
 by Hugh Blemings
 
--

Friday
 
10:40-11:30
 autocluster - a system for automated 
 testing of clustered systems 
 by Andrew Tridgell and Martin Schwenke
 
11:40-12:30
 Ogg Chopping: techniques for programming 
 correctness and efficiency
 by Conrad Parker

13:50-14:40
 Power management that works 
 by Matthew Garrett
 
14:50-15:40
 Geek My Ride 
 by Jonathan Oxer and Jared Herbohn
 
16:00-16:50
 Open Source for Model Rocket Design
 by Bdale Garbee
 
17:00-17:50
 Lightning Talks! Yay!

If anyone's got suggestions for the talks I've not figured out yet, please let me know!

posted: Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:44 | filed under: / blog/ computers/ | permalink | Tags: lca, lca2009, wtf, | Comments: 0

After a rather... interesting thread on #linux.conf.au today, I inherited a new e-mail address. I can now be reached at hair-removal at the secondary domain of linux.conf.au 2009 (marchsouth.org). No idea how that one happened.

posted: Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:26 | filed under: / blog/ programming/ | permalink | Tags: acm icpc, acm sppc, progcomp, | Comments: 2

Well, as previously reported here and here, my team, the Mehffort Musketeers had a pretty good run in the 2008 ACM South Pacific Programming Contest. Today, the SPP Contest website announced that we've been allocated a Wild Card entry into the World Finals, to be held in Stockholm after easter next year. I'm excited! (Hugely so).

posted: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:51 | filed under: / blog/ programming/ | permalink | Tags: python, | Comments: 0

Python 3000 (aka Python v3.0) has just been released! Grab your source tarballs whilst they're hot!

posted: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 14:19 | filed under: / blog/ life/ | permalink | Tags: uni, marks, | Comments: 0

Another semester, another 4 HDs... No idea what to make of that. More specifically, my marks were: 85 for Graphics, 85 for Research, 96 for Real and Complex Analysis, 97 for Topics in Advanced Mathematics. All in all, it's about what I expected, which is probably the first time that that's happened for me, and it's a nice feeling.

19 down; 5 to go.

posted: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:05 | filed under: / blog/ programming/ | permalink | Tags: video, java, | Comments: 0

I was recently pointed at a talk given by Guy Steele (who, amongst other things, co-invented Scheme), given at the 1998 OOPSLA Conference, entitled Growing a Language.

In it, he talks about the need for Java to add features that will allow the language to grow as users add to it, specifically suggesting two features (one of which has been added, albeit poorly, and one of which is still yet to be implemented); but the real value of the talk is not what he says, but in how it is presented: whilst giving that away would be entirely unfair, I recommend watching at least the first 10 minutes of it, to allow you to figure out what's going on.

So, if you get a spare hour in the near future, I suggest you watch it.

posted: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:41 | filed under: / blog/ life/ | permalink | Tags: life, tucs, lca09, lca, uni, exams, | Comments: 0

Time for me to enumerate a few things that have happened of late (in reverse order of occurrence, naturally), since it now seems like the time to do so.

Uni

I handed in my Computer Science term project today, which, I suppose means that my academic year is now complete. I'm fairly happy with how the semester's progressed, every unit that I studied (including the two that I chose on a whim) has been excellent, which is more than I can say for previous semesters. Analysis (Real analysis to be specific) was absolutely fantastic, and I'll be doing my best to enrol in the follow-up functional analysis unit (I've had it suggested to me by several people, and I'm convinced), and it's certainly made the maths major I'm now enrolled in seem like a very good idea.

As far as I can tell, exams went well, but I won't know for certain until results are released next week (I'm very confident with my two maths units, Graphics is a different story (though I don't recall doing as badly as the lecturer claims the class as a whole went)).

TUCS

In other (though slightly Uni-related) news, TUCS (The UTAS Computing Society) had its Annual General Meeting for 2009 last week, and as well as discovering the joy of barbecued* Woolworths' Quantity Burgers (they're excellent, really!), I was elected society president for 2009. The rest of the exec are also a truly awesome bunch of people, so the future certainly looks bright.

TUCS has run some excellent events in its inaugural year: our tech talks were, in general, wildly successful, amongst other things. Thanks to that, we've become what appears to be one of the most active societies on campus. I'll be doing my best to make sure that we can replicate, or even better that next year. (If you're a speaker, or know any good ones, and would like to give a talk, let me know!)

In related news, we also took delivery of some particularly awesome TUCS-Branded T-Shirts just after exams -- we're particularly happy with how that went and will probably do it again next year.

(*I will definitely be approving funding for a new barbecue for the society... the current one is truly dreadful)

LCA

Last week-ish, I had dinner with some members of the Linux.conf.au organising committee. Though much of what was discussed must be kept under wraps (it's thoroughly exciting, I promise!), I can tell you that the conference is shaping up to be most excellent, and if you haven't already booked your ticket, I suggest you do so as soon as possible!

That is all for me for now, more news as it comes (I hope!)

posted: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:02 | filed under: / blog/ | permalink | Tags: meme, book, | Comments: 1

Well, I've decided to do the Book Meme from PLOA and Planet Debian etc... Just recapping for those of you who haven't seen it yet (not many of you):

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST

And mine is:

It is possible to prove that if such a nontrivial square root of 1 exists, then n is not prime.

-- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Second Edition.

posted: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:06 | filed under: / blog/ programming/ | permalink | Tags: sockets, python, | Comments: 2

Whilst doing some coding today for my semester research project I found a need to check for incoming data on a socket without taking any data out of the stream. Here's the code I came up with:

     
cp.sock.setblocking(False)
try:
    cp.sock.recv(0)
    stuffwaiting = True
except socket.error:
    stuffwaiting = False
cp.sock.setblocking(True)

This code works finely on Linux -- you can only receive data if there is data to be received (even if you want to receive no data). Unfortunately, the code doesn't port to Mac OS -- you may receive as many bytes as there are in the socket's buffer -- if there are no bytes in the buffer, you can receive 0 bytes. Therefore, the following fix is necessary:

     
cp.sock.setblocking(False)
try:
    cp.sock.recv(1, socket.MSG_PEEK)
    stuffwaiting = True
except socket.error:
    stuffwaiting = False
cp.sock.setblocking(True)

So, my question for Lazyweb is: is there a better way to do this?